I posed the question yesterday about the basing of destroyers and TBDs for my 2015 Jutland project. I mentioned that in the past, I would have based them all individually but given the number of destroyers present at Jutland, I was thinking about a number of different basing options:

Base them individually – but there are a lot of them – in fact on the British side, 26 × Light Cruisers and 79 × Destroyers with the Germans deploying 11 × Light Cruisers and 61 × Torpedo Boats

Base a single leader for each flotilla instead of all the vessels individually and scale up the armament on the base to represent the full flotilla’s firepower

Base the whole flotilla (that is, all the vessels that make it up) on a single base, and scale up the armament for the full flotilla’s firepower – but this is a lot of vessels.

Base by half flotilla

Base by division (which is where I am leaning towards at the moment)

I did like the options of basing either by half flotilla or division. After playing with the ships on a cm square grid, I came to the conclusion that if I was going to bulk base, that I would need to base by division. A half flotilla (two divisions) would just take up too much area. Basing by division would give me a base approximately 4cm wide with four vessels based, either in line abreast or oblique.

However, I think I am going to opt for single basing of the destroyers and TBDs, along with all the other vessels. The destroyers will be on a base 1cm wide which is big enough to handle, also big enough to model a little sea on the base and to carry the vessel’s name down the side.

The pictures below give and idea of the relative size of the destroyers to a battle ship (in this case, HMS Agamemnon). You can also see the full 4th destroyer flotilla laid out with flotilla leader and half flotilla leaders shown. I used a number of Admiralty M-class destroyers for the testing.

And a division in oblique – this would take up 4cm x 6cm

A division in line abreast – 4cm x 2 or 3cm base size

The full 4th Destroyer Flotilla with leaders (well, all made up with M-class destroyers)

A destroyer next to the Agamemnon – it’s all a matter of scale. The battleships will likely go on bases 2cm wide by about 8cm long